'The big iSHOES' III

For the past year we've been having in Bucharest a flood of vintage/second hand/designer fashion fairs. I think that the average is two fashion fairs of this type per week. 

Some of them have turned out to be a disaster: with a PR done through a Facebook Event only, with few visitors meaning that the attendees did not even cover their participation fees from the sold items, with low quality products and so on. Others have a great history and are celebrating several editions. 

Some fashion fairs are dedicated to vintage, others to accessories and others to designers but most of them are a mix of cool clothes created by young Romanian designers, Top Shop/Asos/H&M clothes that you cannot find in Romania and vintage (mainly second hand) items. 

I tend to attend them all: mainly out of curiosity and because I can really find some great things among the immensity of anonimous clothes. I also participate because the people attending this type of events are mostly creative young people, bloggers, journalists, art students and so on. It's like everyone puts on his/her  coolest outfit and heads out to meet others likewise. I even wonder sometimes where are these people when they're not attending these fashion fairs, as you can rarely spot creativity on the street.

This weekend I had the pleasure to attend the wonderful The Big iShoes III fair. As far as I know, it's the only Romanian fashion fair dedicated mainly to shoes, which is a pity as we have a lot of creative young designers who would benefit from them, as well as the public. The fair was held on Saturday, 23rd of October and Sunday, 24th of October at Cafe Verona, in the basement of the wonderful Carturesti (Tea shop, Bookstore, cafe). 

The purpose of this fair was to create a display that better illustrates the contemporary design, mixing in an intelligent and assumed way the creations of young Romanian designers (and not only) from a couple of fields:
- shoes and bags: Iulia Stanescu, Oana Lazar, DADA, Adriana Nedelea, Condur by Alexandru, Mineli boutique si magazinele: fashionlab.ro, coolbazaar.ro si Detailz

- fine clothes: clothing by Fe(Male), Rue des Trucs, A minuit Marie, accesories by Modamania, natural cosmetics by Soap Mill
- the Tuxedo Confessions who sells Romanian designers clothing (Izabella Petrut, Raluca Buzura, Renata Rakossy, George Neagu, Lana, Alina Ene) and foregin brands (Mitemite, i-Bag, Poketo, Starstyling, Tahir Sultan

The concept fair "The Big iShoes" is a militant of the slowretail trend, which encourages people to replace the shopping against the clock done in the malls with the peaceful interraction between buyer and designer. Slowretail is a protest against uniformity and loosing the values we have.

My big disappoinment was that Mihaela Glavan, Coca Zaboloteanu and Pixie Shoes (and other smaller designers/online/custom made shops dedicated to shoes) did not participate. I love their designs and it would have been great to have all the important designers in one place, at least just to have a good image of the contemporary Romanian shoe design.

However, I was delighted to admire again the Lust of Creation shoes, that I have found at other fairs, the new commers Condur by Alexandru (I have a surprise soon) and all the others. There were a lot of colours, mix of fabrics (patent leather and suede was the most popular), shearling boots (!), some very sexy 70's chunky heeled shoes, electric colours, thigh highs, oxfords, fringes. All in all, anyone would have found there the perfect shoe, since the display was so generous.

I loved the bags too. There were some ecofriendly ones from Coolbazaar.ro, in the style that made famous Nahui Ollin, or the mindblowing newspaper clutches from Mitemite that you can buy at Tuxedo Confessions.
As for the clothing, I loved every piece designed by Lana, the designs at the Tuxedo Confessions stand and Fe[Male].

There were many attending the fair, but this was done in a different way: every person had the chance to get to know the designer, find out how the item he was interested in was designed and then created, share thoughts and make suggestions. This is very important to me (and others of course) since it gives personality to the item you buy and a meaning to the act of buying - you add a story to yourself.

As for what the designers were concerned, at the end of the day they felt happy and fulfilled: every stand offered enough space (compared to other fairs they attended in the past), they all were part of the same area of contemporary design (no vintage and no second hand) and, most of all, they felt happy about the quality public that visited their stands, which helped create the chic mood that defines slowretail.

All in all, I was happy that there are still quality events that promote genuine creativity, where values are still  kept and cherished, even though there are still progresses to be made. But this is a promissing beginning!

Here are some photos to help you better understand what has happened:

photo credits: Cristina Dirnea, more here.